Watch the Debut Episode of Revolutionary New Web Series Brown Girls

"I had never ever written a project like this…. This was super, super new to me," Fatimah Asghar, the 27-year-old poet and writer of Brown Girls, says. Still, just the idea of her debut web series captured the attention of audiences across the globe. When the trailer debuted in September, it sparked immediate interest online, from celebs like Willow Smith to press outlets like Vice and NBC. For tonight's premiere there will be viewing parties in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, and other cities.

Fatimah Asghar

Megan Lee Miller

Sam Bailey, the series' director, is not surprised. "I think it's so unapologetically female and so unapologetically brown that people are excited...because there's a lack of that in TV," she says. "I think that speaks to a growing number of people who feel that their stories are considered to be invalid by [the lack of] representation."

Brown Girls tells the story of Leila (Nabila Hossain), a Pakistani-American writer starting to own her queer identity, and Patricia (Sonia Denis), a funny, bohemian, and struggling black female musician. Inspired by Asghar's own 10-year-long friendship with the singer Jamila Woods (who serves as the music supervisor for the show), Brown Girls is a frank yet loving depiction of twentysomething life through the lens of flawed artists navigating Chicago.

Premiering on ELLE.com today is the first episode, which begins the night after one of Leila's many confusing hookups. The entire series will be available at browngirlswebseries.com from 9 P.M. tonight.

Rather than relegate black and brown women to the sidelines—as a "best friend" character or bit part—Brown Girls has made them the stars. Leila bucks the stereotypes of South Asian American women on television screens; she is artistic, queer, and vulnerable. Patricia, her best friend, is funny, but not abrasive and hypersexualized or stereotyped. The two attend queer-centric parties at DIY spaces filled with black and brown faces like their own (everyone in the cast, including extras, is a person of color).

Patricia often reflects on her questionable burgeoning relationships while gracing the screen in bright, colorful blouses made of African textiles. Leila's successful and accomplished older sister questions not just her lifestyle choices but the quality of her roti. "I think to never, ever see yourself and never see communities that look like yours or are represented in joy—even if they're messy, even if they're struggling—is really hard and dehumanizing," Asghar says.

Director Sam Bailey on set

Megan Lee Miller

Brown Girls is revolutionary—and that's not hyperbole. Shows like Girlsfaced criticism for their limited depictions of women of color in the city. And although more series depicting women of color have emerged in recent years (such as the delightful and absurd Chewing Gum or the smart and frank Insecure), it's still rare to see women of different racial backgrounds as best friends—a strange fact when, Asghar says, those friendships are more the norm in her world than what is usually shown on screens. "Often when you have two women of color from different racial backgrounds, they're usually viewed as antagonists to each other or in competition for a man or a job," she notes. "That has just never been my experience."

'Brown Girls' is revolutionary.

While Girls, Insecure, and Broad City take place in New York or Los Angeles, Brown Girls lacks the glamour of the coastal cities. Instead, the action happens in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, a diverse enclave filled with Mexican American families, art school students, and burgeoning creative communities. Similarly, Brown Girls makes real people the center of the show—not just in the writing, but in the casting as well. Hossain is a dancer and engineer in real life; Denis is a New York–based stand-up comedian.

Patricia (Sonia Denis) and Leila (Nabila Hossain)

Megan Lee Miller

The show itself also had from-scratch beginnings. Asghar began writing the script for Brown Girls in the fall of 2015. Bailey, whose web series You're So Talented was nominated for a Gotham Award, attended a reading of that script in early 2016 and was immediately drawn to the story. "They reflected so many of my friendships," she says. "To see this actual genuine friendship happen and see people take up space and love each other…that was my entry into the series."

This is not the narrative of every brown girl in the world.

After the reading, Bailey approached Asghar about directing Brown Girls. Also at the reading that night was Aymar Jean Christian, who asked to add the series to OpenTV, a web television platform he founded to showcase works from women, people of color, and the queer community. "I think what struck me was how needed [these] representations are," Christian says. "This show is really going to expand people's minds of what can happen when the power of production is given to the community that we are representing."

Ultimately, the goal isn't simply to stand in for a community. "I want people to see these characters as multifaceted, multilayered, complex human beings," Bailey says. "This is not the narrative of every brown girl in the world. I'm only interested in adding to the narrative, because we can be a multitude of things." And that's how Brown Girls is quietly breaking stereotypes about what it means to be a young woman of color: by putting the charismatic, independent, individual Leila and Patricia front and center, and encouraging us to look.

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